For the past two decades, D.R. Thorpe has carved out a niche for himself by writing capable biographies of postwar British prime ministers. This is the first of the three: a complete overview of Alec Douglas-Home, the prime minister who succeeded Harold Macmillan when he retired from the premiership in 1963. Thorpe's well-researched book presents Douglas-Home as a dedicated politician who saw his career as the duty of his class, and one he performed admirably. In this respect, his brief premiership was but a single episode in a long career that spanned from his service as PPS to Nevile Chamberlain to his second period as Foreign Secretary under his successor Edward Heath. Thorpe relates all of this in a book that is sympathetic but not uncritical towards its subject, a decent man often overshadowed by the larger political personalities of his era. ( )